He laid before Ferdy, with a power which the latter could not but acknowledge, the selfishness and brutality of his conduct since he was a boy.

He told him of his own earlier privations, of his labors, of his ambitions.
"I have worked my heart out," he said, "for your mother and for you.

I have never known a moment of rest or of what you call 'fun.' I set it before me when your mother promised to marry me that I would make her as good as the first lady in the land--that is, in New York.

She should have as big a house and as fine a carriage and as handsome frocks as any one of them--as old Mrs.Wentworth or old Mrs.Brooke of Brookford, who were the biggest people I ever knew.

And I have spent my life for it.